


Wedding Bells

by VinHampton



Category: Original Work, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 03:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1730351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VinHampton/pseuds/VinHampton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As her wedding day approaches, Vin thinks about her first marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wedding Bells

I’m looking for the tower of learning.  
I’m looking for the copious prize.  
I saw it in your eyes, what I’m looking for;  
I saw it in your eyes, what I’m looking for. 

 

July 5, 2003.

On the night before my wedding, I didn’t sleep a wink. I closed my eyes and lay on the sofa for eight hours, pretending not to hear Robbie sighing on the mattress, pretending it was alright when he got up in the middle of the night, reached for his keys and left the flat. I looked at the dress that hung from the door, swathed in protective plastic, paid for by my husband-to-be. For a few hours, I entertained the thought of running away, or of calling him to say I had changed my mind, but of course I knew I would never go through with something like that. I had decided to marry him, because it would be an easy ticket out of poverty. And poverty is a sinkhole, it will carry you under if you let it. My childhood had not been happy, but I had been raised in comfort, in luxury, eating well and sleeping well and wearing fine, expensive clothes. The indignity of sleeping on a torn up sofa for years, of wearing only things which had been worn by others before me, of eating whatever was cheapest, of not seeing any way out, for so many years, had given me a last push into his arms. He had promised me a comfortable life, and maybe I could learn to love him as a husband. 

 

June 24, 2013.

“I would marry you if you wanted me to,” he says, and the ground beneath my feet shatters open to reveal a canyon of doubt. The ledge I stand on is precarious. Holmes and I have always been clear and in agreement on the topic: marriage is not for us, it has no place in our lives, we need our independence. And then he says marriage is not a closed door and I feel my chest tighten, and I cannot decide whether it is out of fear or want. The doubt throws me off, startles me. I do not know whether I want to marry him, but I no longer know that I don’t. And now I begin to wonder whether I have simply been hard-headed. After all, I have known for a long time now that he is different to the others. For all our disagreements, for all our passion and all our electricity, there is no denying what I know: I would like to grow old with him, to share his successes and his failures, to eat my meals in his company, to share my excitement with him when I overcome new obstacles, to share his bed and his mornings, to have him with me when my body starts to fail me, and to soothe him when the light of his mind starts to grow dim. 

~~

I really do feel that I’m dying.  
I really do feel that I’m dead.  
I saw it in your eyes, what I’m looking for;  
I saw it in your eyes, what’ll make me live.  
July 5 2003.

The morning was inevitable, and when it arrived, Marta came with coffee and toast, then helped me into my dress. I looked in the mirror; I felt like a princess and I felt like a sham.  
“We are going to miss you so much, Vin,” she said, buttoning the spine of delicate pearls. “You will come and visit us, won’t you? And you’ll invite us to your palace?”  
I held my stomach in, the dress forcing my back straight. “Of course I will. You are my family,” I said. We never did meet again.  
In the church, I walked down the aisle, a fraud in white, putting on a smile for the man who would become my husband. He drew the veil from my face, handsome and youthful in his grey suit and top hat, and the one of the lilies from my bouquet pinned to his lapel. I swore before him, before somebody’s idea of a god, before my friends and his, and before his family, I swore before them with all the sincerity I could muster that I would love him and honour him, be true to him in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, all the days of my life. I did my best to mean it. The church organ played on as we walked in procession out of the church, as husband and wife, this holy, this sacred union. I felt no different about myself, or him, or about us. 

 

June 24, 2013.

I have been through marriage once before, and it almost cost me my life. Why would it be any different with him? [Because he is not Connor.] Would marriage change us? Would it change him? Would he become territorial, abusive, demanding? What need do I have for it? Absolutely none. It would change nothing, would not change me or him or us. Is purely ceremonial, superfluous. But that tightness in my chest remains as I sit at my piano and think, because I am thinking about it. I don’t care about the dress, nor about the money, nor about God… but the idea of swearing before him and before my friends and his that I would love him and honour him, that I would commit myself to him, that I would continue to be faithful to him, that I would try to be my best self for him, and that I would stay by his side through danger, through illness, through grief, through sorrow, that I would make him proud and that I would be the one to always support him – the thought does not repel me. This concerns me. 

~~

All the sights of Paris  
Pale inside your iris.  
Tip the Eiffel Tower with one glance;  
Stained glass cathedrals with one glint.  
You smashed it with your eyes, what I’m looking for:  
One blink and then my heart wasn’t there no more. 

August 14, 2003.

We honeymooned in Paris. I did not fall in love with him, but was enthusiastic about the future. Romance would blossom, children would come, we would be a family and my life would finally begin. When we arrived back home, I tried to make it my own. I cleaned it and unpacked what little I had. I cooked him meals when he returned from work and we sat together, in silence but smiling, and ate, then went to bed where he would ask me to please keep to my side because he didn’t like being touched in the night, and I complied. 

One evening, during dinner, I told him I would like to return to university, to study, to earn my degree, to make something of myself. He laughed. I didn’t understand and tried to explain – I’d not had the opportunity to study, I thought I could do well, it would make me happy, I wanted to be successful, please, I said, it would make me happy, and then he punched me for the first time, enough to knock me to the floor. The first time you are beaten, you are overwhelmed by shock, and you justify your partner’s actions because this has never happened before. You begin to berate yourself for being too persistent, too annoying, you should have let him eaten his dinner in peace. He apologised, acted horrified, I believed he had just let his temper get the better of him. I told him it was alright, and I understood, and I would be quiet. 

A few weeks later, after dinner, he said I should have got pregnant by now and something must be wrong with me. I told him I wasn’t ready for children yet – perhaps in a year or two once we’d settled in, once we’d planned for it, once I was older. I was twenty-one; I didn’t want to have children at the age my mother had me. It would be a bad omen. This time, after I had been beaten, there was no apology. He poured himself a drink and left the room, leaving me to tend to my bleeding nose and my bruised legs; leaving me determined to keep children away from his violent world. 

When I killed him, my hands shook, my world cracked. I was widowed and emancipated. I swore I would never let another person in, never let them hurt me, never let them make me feel small. I would never marry again. 

(Time proves one wrong).

 

June 24, 2013.

When I began to lose my mind, Holmes’ voice became warmer; he extended his arms to me more frequently. When the static in my head became so loud it was impossible to sleep, he stayed awake with me without demanding thanks. When I became edgy and paranoid, he stopped working just so he could be with me. When I became disassociated and killed a man, his hands shook, his world cracked. He trembled as he helped me bury the evidence, lied for me, risked his life, his work for me. If I had been more lucid I would have realised the depth of his sacrifice. I do now. 

[I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.]

I suppose what I am trying to say is that we do not need a piece of paper and the law’s approval to know we are destined to love and ruin each other. Life has provided evidence enough of that. I do not have to be his wife to know how the concave between his neck and chest has slowly become the perfect fit for my head as we sleep without assigning sides. Instead of a wedding ring, I am tattooed on his wrist, where his pulse beats life. This secular, this profane union, the holiest I’ve known. 

[I love you because I know no other way  
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,  
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,  
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.]

 

~~

*/Excerpts from ‘Tower of Learning’ by Rufus Wainwright, and Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda/*


End file.
